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Getting back to yes: A local perspective on decommissioning, restart, and responsibility
For 45 years, Duane Arnold Energy Center operated in Linn County, Ia., near the town of Palo and just northwest of Cedar Rapids. The facility, owned by NextEra Energy, was the only nuclear power plant in the state.
In August 2020, a historic derecho swept across eastern Iowa with winds approaching 140 miles per hour. Damage to the plant’s cooling towers accelerated a shutdown that had already been planned, and the facility entered decommissioning soon after, with its fuel removed in October of that year. Iowa’s only nuclear plant had gone off line.
Today the national energy landscape looks very different than it did just six short years ago. Electricity demand is rising rapidly as data centers, artificial intelligence infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and electrification expand across the country. Reliable, carbon-free baseload power has become increasingly valuable. In that context, Linn County has approved the rezoning necessary to support the recommissioning and restart of Duane Arnold and is actively supporting NextEra’s efforts to secure the remaining state and federal approvals.
Min Wook Na, Doyoung Shin, Sung Joong Kim (Hanyang Univ), Gwang Hyeok Seo (KINS), Jeong Ik Lee (KAIST)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 871-877
Recently, development on the new concept of advanced small modular reactor, so-called Autonomous Transportable On-demand reactor Module (ATOM) was started in Korea. Major design objectives of the ATOM are adopting Dry Air Cooling System (DACS) and developing passive safety systems. Among several passive safety systems, the Passive Residual Heat Removal System (PRHRS) is crucial since it prevents a core to be damaged by decay heat. Generally, it is known that a currently considered PRHRS has a limitation of cooling capability after all of the stored water is vaporized. In this study, the PRHRS coupled with the DACS (PRHRS+DACS) is suggested to overcome the limitation. The objectives of this study are to assess cooling capability of PRHRS+DACS and to investigate the effects of the design parameters using the MARS code. The simulation results show that the time for PRHRS to maintain its cooling capability is extended by applying the DACS. Furthermore, the effects of the environment temperature and heat transfer area ratio on the cooling capability of the DACS was confirmed.